


The light of the West

by ars_belli



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 09:33:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7503192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/pseuds/ars_belli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>History will say that there were two monarchs during Aerys's reign: Aerys Targaryen and Tywin Lannister.  The Maesters will ignore the third, because Joanna Lannister was a woman, for all that she wore the crown better than any of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Joanna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [curiouslyfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslyfic/gifts).



She prefers the Throne Room when it is empty.  
Shadows cling to the dragon skulls, as black and heavy as the mourning gown trailing in her wake. Even the torches are in their death throes, the scent of woodsmoke and lingering embers marking the path to the Iron Throne. The scale of the room swallows her footsteps, high and long and comforting in its vastness. Not even a year in this toy castle in a wattle-and-daub city and she already longs for the Rock. She almost, almost hears the roar of the sea against the cliffs, amongst the final chant of the septons at midnight mass. Sickly incense worms up her nostrils into the back of her throat. How much worse must it be for the Kingsguard? There is only the one tonight. She walks as sedately—as demurely—as possible past the body lying in state. The septons, septas and Silent Sisters file in the opposite direction. Joanna fixes her eyes upon the painted ones of His Grace until the mourning procession leaves. The stone eyes are violet, pale and unseeing, too much like his son's for comfort.  
"My Lady."  
"Prince Lewyn," she greets.  
The white cloak lingers at her side. For some reason that presence is more stifling than the tapers of incense left for His Grace.  
"Your sister sends her regards," she murmurs. "And a large bottle of gin, I suspect."  
The knight laughs in a most unfitting way for a Prince of Dorne.  
"A small payment for the seat which might have been mine."  
From the corner of her eye, he is as lifeless as his words. _More fool Jahaerys._ Dorne has barely been part of the Seven Kingdoms for two centuries. Does House Targaryean have such a short memory? Prince Lewyn plucks one of the candles from the candelabra near her hair. _Which of His Grace's prayers has Dorne snuffed out?_ Mindful not to shake her hair, she takes the beeswax in her bare fingers.  
"Speaking of seats…"  
Joanna follows the motion of his shield arm. She curtseys, and mounts the steps to the Iron Throne.  


"Lady Joanna."  
Prince Aerys—His Grace, now—slumps on the Iron Throne. His long, slender fingers and his silver hair tangle carelessly amongst the barbs. The candlelight fails to bring any glow to his pale skin and reddened eyes.  
"Your Grace."  
Her knees sink to a curtsey before her thoughts can forestall them. Aerys seizes her wrist, before the candle can overbalance and go out. _Before I overbalance and end up like Maegor the Cruel, slain by the Iron Throne._ His nails dig bruises into her wrist, but she cannot bring herself to care.  
"Please forgive our manners, my Lady."  
"Consider them forgiven, of course, your Grace."  
He plucks the candle from her fingers with one hand, nestling the long taper amongst the swords.  
"Has your Grace quite forgotten his manners?"  
"Not at all. Come, my Lady, please sit."  
He pats his knee as if offering a serving girl a perch on some rude wooden bench. A raised eyebrow quells the ghost of Tywin growling imprecations in her ear.  
"Am I some tavern slattern, your Grace?" she asks imishly  
"Tavern slatterns do not ask us to commit treason, my Lady. You wear neither the king's crown nor the Hand's chain."  
The candle flame lingers on the chain of hands tangled in his fingers, perched between the fanned blades of the arm rest. She cannot tear her eyes away, Lannister gold and Targaryean steel kissing obscenely. Then the words are out, as if the pall of grief that clings to the court has dulled her wits as well as her moods. Closer to Aerys that she cares to imagine.  
"Where is it written that women may not be Hand?" she bursts out.  
Some of the melancholy ebbs from the lines in the young king's face. Perhaps a quirk of his mouth is merely the play of shadows on his lips.  
"You would wear the chain? My Lady will ruin her dress on the swords."  
"Rather that than have your Grace ruin my dress on his sword."  
Aerys throws back his head and _laughs_. Success flushes her cheeks and knots in her belly. The royal laugh is brittle, little better than his unkempt hair, and as hollow as his pale cheeks, but it is laughter nonetheless. There is life in Aerys still, and she alone knows how to kindle it.  
"Joanna," he murmurs. "You are cruel."  
Then he reaches for the laces of her gown, the golden hands still wound about his wrist.  



	2. Tywin

The royal tent is blissfully quiet and somewhat cool. With the king gone and his Kingsguard with him, it might very well be the finest abode in the Stepstones. Not that that means much, Tywin reflects grimly, collapsing onto a stool. The canvas creaks alarmingly under the weight of his crimson plate, but the sole occupant of the tent barely glances up from his writing. In retaliation for being ignored, Tywin appropriates the cup of wine near Aerys's elbow. That gets his attention.  
"Where has Steffon gone?" Tywin questions.  
"Giving some camp follower his finest re-enactment of our last battle," the crown prince drawls, "Gods know why, he pays them to fuck him, not for them to like him."  
The image of Tytos's mistress dances before his eyes in the candlelight of the tent. Tywin pushes it away, until the shame fades into an annoyance as simple as the scratching of Prince Aerys's quill on his parchment. He has no time for home, not even for cousin Joanna's letter, not when Maelys the Monstrous has an army with no intention of abiding by the rules of single combat. He needs rest before finishing this thrice-cursed campaign. All three knights do. He'll never see either of them afterwards, not for years, until his father sends him to court again, or dies.  
"She could do worse: at least Steffon only talks about Maelys and doesn't look like him," Tywin grumbles.  
Idiot. How many battles have been lost because of a minor commander taking his mind off a strategic goal for some tactical victory, and Steffon has to wear himself out the night before! He rubs his eyes, dashing away the grit of sleep. The walk to his tent is shorter than a good many others, but too long for Tywin's comfort. The heir to a Lordship Paramount should be closer to the king than half the lick-spittles within a stone's throw of the royal pavilion.  
"Stay in our quarters tonight," Aerys offers, as if reading his mind.  
_Our._ Tywin has been banished back to use of the royal 'we' like so many others who outlived their usefulness. A long drink of Arbor red does nothing to abate the bitterness festering in his throat.  
"You have no obligation to do this, my prince," he says.  
Yet Aerys has that peculiar gleam in his eyes that heralds a fit of temper when the prince does not get his way. "My thanks," he says, with all the warmth which another man might waste on a smile.  
His Grace's thin lips twist into a smile. An apology for his inadvertent use of the royal plural, Tywin wonders, or a cover for the slip? Tywin's thoughts drift and jostle like the waves at the base of the Rock. The crown prince returns to his letter, while Tywin gradually sips his stolen wine. This vintage is as strong as it is fine, and Tywin has no wish to imitate the rabble of drunken knights jousting with whores on their backs or vomiting into the sands. This is Jahaerys's army, after all, not Daemon Targaryean's.  
"Enjoying our wine, are you?"  
There it is again, the plural, the sound pinching at his ear like Genna's fingernails.  
"Well, the three of us share everything, do we not?" he jests.  
There is that blade-keen look in the crown prince's eyes again. Tywin merely tips his head back, examining the building storm with the lazy stare of a man who can retreat into the Rock when the lightning comes. The gossamer-light rustle along his skin heralds the approaching thunder. He can almost smell it on the prince, that peculiarly empty fragrance of new-struck lightning, piercing the heavy, salt odour of the sea. He swallows the bitter longing for home with a sip of sour wine.  


"I had best divest this armour, Your Grace. It's late."  
"Early," the prince retorts. "The hour of the bat, the white cloaks always change shift."  
Both of them rise. The prince's fingers run over the golden clasps of Tywin's armour, leaving a trail of black.  
"You played at being my knight today, surely we ought to carry the jest through?"  
"But of course, _ser_ ," Tywin counters.  
The thin lips of his companion quirk at the irony. His armour slides off, piece by glided, lacquered piece, stained with ink instead of blood. The heir to Casterly Rock swallows, throat dry despite the wine. The lack of conflict has left him cheated of catharsis. Yet he endures, until the crown prince's hands are light and cool on his bare torso and Aerys kneels for him the second time that day.  
"Your Grace—" he murmurs.  
_Stop,_ he wants to say, despite that it isn't his place to chastise a Targaryean.  
"My lion," the prince returns, "I do believe that you enjoy the sight of me at your feet."  
Aerys's voice is light, but his eyes are dark. Tywin bites his lip, shrugging, carefully nonchalant. The memory rushes bright through his veins anyway. Aerys might have chosen any of his Kingsguard, or Ser Barristan who had so distinguished himself in single combat, or any hero who had earned his place in the songs. Yet he had chosen Tywin. "Ser Tywin, of House Lannister of Casterly Rock!" the prince had carolled. No-one had laughed when the prince's high voice had called him forth. No-one had so much as smiled as the blood of the dragon knelt before a man younger than him. Not even a lord, and heir to a house which was the butt of many a joke even within its own fiefdom! No-one would forget, not when every royal joust would reflect upon the knight who made him. The power of it makes him dizzy, fingers curling tight into the prince's collarbone, even as his knees weaken.  


"May I rise? _Ser_?"  
Aerys's mouth quirks in pleasure—not jest, surely, for the smile does not wound. Tywin's hands flicker inarticulately on his pale, narrow shoulders, the prince's wine-dark silks cool against his knuckles. His gauntlets and codpiece have gone, neatly piled with the rest of his plate. He must be tired, if he cannot recall lifting his arms for Aerys to remove his chainmail. Sweat-saoked linen pools at his feet. _Daydreaming like cousin Joanna._ Now he is armoured in nothing but his smallclothes; and even those not for long.  
"We thought not."  
The perversion of it shudders along his spine. How can Aerys's lips form such formality one instant, while the next his tongue ghosts along his hipbones, and his pelvis, and lingers _just short_ —  
_Waiting._ The crown prince is waiting, for him, for his approval, for his command. The heady, reckless insight slays the pleas lying in ambush behind his half-parted lips. It doesn't replace them with whatever elusive phrase Aerys needs to continue, just leaves Tywin panting unsteadily. Yet Aerys _needs_ , and that alone gives his hands the strength to slide from under Aerys's tunic, over the long neck and sharp cheekbones.  
Tywin knots his fingers into the silver curls. He tugs Aerys's mouth to its rightful place by force. The prince is more than obedient, eager—ardent, even. Yes, ardent, what better explanation for the heat that licks under his muscles and the smoke clouding his mind? _Fire made flesh._ The old phrase about the blood of the dragon is the last counter-attack of his ordered, rational mind before the fire consumes that too, leaving him helpless in the dragon prince's clutches, while he kisses and licks and devours. Surely his bones are ash by now. Tywin crumples, face contorted in pleasure.  


For all the triumph in his eyes, Aerys does nothing more sinister than cradle Tywin's head in his arms. His cock rests limp along the prince's pelvis, staining the royal silks in ways that he doesn't want to consider.  
_Lannisters. Debts._ Yet he cannot, does not know _how_ …  
It makes him shiver. The crown prince runs a calloused thumb along the curve of Tywin's silent mouth.  
"Not yet," he whispers. "One day I will be king."  
"King Aerys, Second of His Name," murmurs Tywin against the royal fingertips.  
The prince stands, with Tywin still draped in his arms like a helpless maid.  
"Long may we reign."  



	3. Aerys

The crown, the prayers, the adulation. They each mean little and less to him, with every aching muscle and tightly-held joint. _He must not cut himself on the Throne._ The silver-tongued sycophants of his court and their sharper-tongued ladies jostle below him, so tightly-packed that the Blackfyre rebels could wipe out half the noble heirs in Westeros with a single trebuchet. They all seek their own honours from the new king. He may as well honour one pebble from another in the Blackwater! Yet there is true gold amongst the false.  


And so he plucks each jewel from the pebbles and sets it in his crown.  


From Ser Barristan, he extracts the Kingsguard's oath. He has saved the crown before, having slain Maelys the Monstrous, last of the Blackfyre line. What better portent of his ability to do so again?  


To Rhaella, gowned in layers of deepest magenta softening through purples and pinks to pale ivory—just like the new-blooming rose she is—he grants her dowry. Has she not given him a son, after all? Ought he not reward her in return? His precious little amethyst will be a peerless match for any Lord. Their father had married them himself, in the great tradition of old Valyria. _The dragon must have three heads._ But no, they had done their duty. _A woods witch told me that the prince was promised would be born of our line._ A puzzle for another time.  


Steffon, he grants a seat on the Small Council. His new Master of Ships hides his disquiet well. _Cousin Steffon…it is grief, not unrest that shadows him, your Grace. Truly, he is ready to take up his father's legacy. The new Lord of Storm's End must hide his grief from his bannermen, that is all._ Or so Cassana Baratheon whispered in his ear not a moon's turn ago, after he had shown her a different way to hide her grief. Storm's End can wait. The Small Council cannot.  


His other true friend he repays with the chain of the office of Hand of the King. Tilting his neck to receive the chain, their lips pass.  
"Long may we reign," Tywin whispers against his ear.  
Aerys's fingers itch to pull his firm jaw in for a kiss. He is rewarded with better than that. A smile, painful in its brightness, sharper than the Iron Throne.  


Then there is only Joanna.  


Joanna, who at the loss of her chain looks lost herself. Even from the throne, he can see her retreat into the courtly mask of decorum. Does she think he is blind, up here? He alone had the perspective to witness the faintest brush of her fingertips against Tywin's knuckles, the lingering of his lips against her ear, the greedy tangling of their hands, such that when they parted, Tywin's heraldic ring was safely hidden in Joanna's delicate fist.  
How could he possibly have made her Hand after that?  
What gift might eclipse the luxuries only found in the songs: marriage for love, endless riches, the brave knight leaving his fair maid in a keep by the sea? Aerys would have granted all of these too, if only—  


 _I want Tywin_ , her voice washed against his ear like the waves against the shore, _At my side and in my bed, I want, I want…_ Had it only been three years ago? Every night the memory is as elusive and vivid as if it had only been the night before, that he watched her shudder amongst the swords and thought: _Tywin. Never._  


In an eye-blink, she is there, kneeling before the Throne, although he cannot remember calling her forth. She is the opposite of Rhaella in every way: not the blooming flower, but the serpent beneath.  
"Do you, Lady Joanna of House Lannister of Casterly Rock, take us, His Grace King Aerys, Second of His Name, to be your lawful wedded husband; for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, until the Stranger do us part?"  
As the whisper of assent leaves her mouth, so does the light from her eyes. Or so he fancies.  



	4. Joanna

_Might husband and wife be ever-more ill-suited?_  
She has read the parchment a dozen times. Her Grace has no need to do so: she only needs to dip her quill in ink and sign the bottom. The decision is not even hers to make, she is merely a proxy for the wishes of the king.  
_We grant permission for Ser Tywin Lannister of House Lannister of Casterly Rock, to wed Princess Artemisia Martell of House Martell. Signed on behalf of His Grace King Aerys II Targaryean._  
"A death warrant, your Grace?" asks Tywin from the doorway.  
Joanna doesn't raise her eyes from the puzzling parchment. Why bother? She has gazed at her cousin a thousand times. Since they were children together, Tywin's ruthless discipline has ever extended to his own body. When is his long, golden mane anything but neat; his physique as carefully chiselled as the Stone Gardens in the Rock; his eyes keen and clear, a match for the green diamond that must shortly sit on the Princess of Dorne's ring finger? _If Tywin did but know it._  
"Marriage. From the ruling princess of Dorne."  
"Good. I so hate being wrong."  
The Hand's boots ring on the stone. Even muffled by the rushes, the sound is annoying. Her hand itches on the quill, as if stung by the scorpions for which her friend's fiefdom is famous. She returns the scroll, un-besmirched by ink, to the leather sheaf in which it rests. Her fingers cap the precious glass ink bottle.  
"Cousin, Artemisia is _princess_ —"  
"— _regnant_ of Dorne, is she not? In need of one prince consort, ferocious in the command tent, adventurous in the bedroom and conciliatory in the solar. Which lord born north of the Boneway would possibly spend his life ruling at the behest of a woman—"  
For a blind, hot moment of frustration, she considers filing Aerys's peculiar gift under 'Westerlands.'  
"His Grace?" she snaps.  
For once she is glad of the court jest. Cousin Tywin kisses her cheek. It is her common sense, surely, not the apology, which sends the parchment safely to the hole marked 'Dorne.'  
"For all that she is your friend, your Grace, I simply cannot understand the customs she holds."  
She pats the Council chair next to hers.  
"Might I say the same about your friend, and his bizarre custom of marrying for love?"  
"Poor Steffon," Tywin murmurs.  
Cousin Tywin has the gall to refuse the royal invitation. He stands behind her instead. His hands are warm from the practice field, attacking the knots in her shoulders with the same force he reserves for Aerys at the jousting.  
"I have…" and her treacherous eyelids flicker closed for only a moment, "I have ladies-in-waiting for that, Tywin, and…"  
She bites viciously into her tongue to quell a sigh of relief.  
"Ladies-in-waiting who bring you flowers, your Grace?" he enquires, only half in jest.  
"Would I ask such menial tasks of them?"  
Her voice lacks its usual fire. She does not ask him to stop, for all that this is inappropriate and selfish and by the Seven Hells, anyone who glimpsed them might think that Tywin lay his hands on other parts of her too!  
"Is there one for the flowers, one for the Valyrian poetry, perhaps another for the trade accounts?" he continues remorselessly.  
Orchids from Lys and Myr; great trails of orange blossoms from Dorne; blue-cream-violet oceans of jacarandas from the Riverlands; best of all, tiny dried packets of saffron, as crimson as her house banner and tasting of gold. Every confinement, without fail, Tywin showered her in them. They were the only glimpse of the outside during the long, stifling days of dry maesters with their "Two moons more, my Lady," and smallfolk-tales of "Clockwise for a boy, my Lady," chattered by useless handmaids…  
In the hours of the wolf, cousin Genna would un-shutter her windows while the other ladies-in-waiting snored. Fragments of Valyrian epic would drift into the stuffy room, a soft current of dactylic hexameter, wafting in tales of dragons and their bold, reckless riders, ruling the vast, empty skies.  
And of course, once the stillborns had been cremated or the miscarriages removed with the sheets or the newborns taken by fever, she could drown herself in the world she had missed. Numbers didn't judge. Gold dragons frowned less than flesh-and-blood ones, silver stags offered no unwanted sympathy, little copper stars were hers to control, not some distant abode of the Seven.  


Tywin's hands have stopped.  
"Joanna."  
A calloused thumb runs along her cheekbone. Were she to lean in, just a fraction, she would kiss the palm of his sword hand. Would it taste good?  
"Prince Rhaegar is one-and-ten," she says instead.  
Pride flickers in her chest. Her voice is as carefree as if discussing the tidal patterns in Blackwater Bay.  
"The crown prince has no need of a half-sister. Why not take a bride from—"  
"—House Lannister, perhaps?"  
"Your Grace, I could not possibly comment."  
Warmth flickers in his voice, like a candle flame held to the vast, cold expanse of the Wall. When did she lose the power to make him laugh?  
"Joanna," he repeats, "His Grace married for love, even the dullest peasant knows that. He can hardly toss you aside."  
She must not blink. No, instead she will fix her mind on Rhaegar marrying cousin Genna; yet the images are fleeting and she cannot chase them, cannot use them to bring a smile to her lips or dry the tears from her eyes.  
"True," she notes wryly, "Who else would he have to prevent him building a new Wall, or quarrying a city's worth of white marble, or—"  
" _Making the Dornish desert bloom_  ," they quote in unison.  
Craning her neck upwards, she cannot quite catch the laughter in the shift of his jaw, with his chin perched on folded arms on the back of her chair. She strains to meet his eyes. She blinks.  
"When have you ever seen a lioness cry, Joanna?"  
Her cousin does not follow the proper behaviour of a subject. He does not discreetly remove himself from the room, fleeing from the sight of Her Grace's vulnerability; nor does he offer a handkerchief with which Her Grace might dab her eyes; nor does he kneel and beg for forgiveness. Instead he moves from behind the chair and perches with supreme arrogance on the Small Council table.  
"The king's inabililty to sire children is his own fault. Did not Princess Rhaella experience…similar misfortunes?"  
"If House Lannister is to save face…" she murmurs, "We ruin the reputation of the crown."  
Tywin reaches across the gulf of empty air between them.  
"There are other means, cousin…"  
If he pretends to be more than a servant of the crown, at least he is less than a paramour. Tywin neglects to fold her in his arms, or shower her with kisses, or any other minstrel-inspired tarradiddle. He merely brushes away the tears himself, fingers trailing across her skin in ciphers she does not yet grasp. Her cheeks, her jaw, her mouth.  
"Other means," she echoes.  
If she kissed up to his wrist, would he cup his fingers about her cheek, and lean over the chair between them, and—? _Treason._ Is it so strange, that her heart hammers in her chest at the mere thought of them engaging in _other means_  ?  
"They would have the Lannister look," she whispers. "Not like Rhaegar. Have you lost your wits?"  
"We are a large and fertile House, Joanna. If necessary, our family tree is never short of rotting leaves to prune. Quite apart from which—"  
Tywin's eyes slide away for the merest instant. She reaches for him, curling her nails into the nape of his neck, forcing him eye-to-eye.  
"Aerys and I," Tywin whispers, lips barely moving, "I have…certain…debts…to repay," he flounders, helpless. "Joanna, I… _Must I say it?_ "  
"And one monarch is no longer enough, is that it?" she teases.  
Her cousin has gone the same shade as a pomegranate. He lifts his free hand to her hair, tugging sharply, and suddenly she is tilting helplessly forwards until they are both half-standing, leaning into each other, foreheads pressed together. _Cousin, you fool._ Dread churns in her gut. _What happens when he casts you aside, or worse?_ Then there would be Joanna alone, reining in the king's flights of fancy. Prince Rhaegar too, perhaps. Should she not have given him a half-sister, doubtless Joanna would be cast aside with Tywin as well, while the sun set for the Westerlands. There it was. Was it worth the risk?  
"Please," he begs, so close that the flecks in his eyes glitter like fool's gold. "For the good of our House, if nothing else."  
Gently, she removes his sword hand from her lips.  


As the Hand's footsteps echo mournfully into the throne Room, Joanna reaches up to dash away the flood of tears. Is she five again, being scolded for climbing into a tree? _Unladylike, unbecoming for even a Lannister of Lannisport,_ Lord Tytos had scoffed. _No wonder the Maid saw fit to punish you._ It was Tywin who carried her to Maester Pycelle, Tywin who squeezed her hand in approval every time she refused milk of the poppy, Tywin who read her books while her broken knee healed, Tywin, Tywin, Tywin…  
It was Aerys who made her queen. _A Lannister always pays their debts._  


She takes the marriage parchment from its refuge and signs the bottom.


End file.
